Predictions for Apple’s October Event

On Tuesday, Apple will once again hold an October special event. Apple’s invitations announced “We still have more to cover,” so what are they going to cover? In furtherance of the goal of embarrassing myself as publicly as possible, I offer the following predictions:

New iPads

Guaranteed. The 9.7-inch version gets a redesign to look like exactly like a larger version of the mini, including its thinner side bezels. A retina iPad mini also seems quite certain, but Apple may elect to keep a non-retina Mini available at a reduced price. The current iPad mini sells for $329. They could possibly drop the non-retina mini to $299, and introduce the higher-end retina version at $399. Since the retina mini will undoubtedly be the same nominal resolution of the full-sized iPad, this means it will actually be a more sophisticated, higher-density display. Consequently, I expect that the smaller display is probably more expensive to make than the larger display.

OS X 10.9 Mavericks

The gold master has already been given to developers, so I expect them to announce a price ($19.99) and immediate availability. Along with this, we’ll probably have a tiny update to iOS 7 to enable iCloud Keychain syncing, which was active in the betas, but disabled in the gold master.

Mac Pro

It was already shown off earlier this year, but they didn’t give a price or release date. I don’t expect it to get a lot of time, but at some point it has to be announced. Apple hasn’t announced a new display since the Thunderbolt Display came out in the summer of 2011, so it would make sense to release a new one at the same time, which would help justify its inclusion in the keynote.

Updated MacBook Pro

The retina MacBook Pros are still running the old generation of Intel’s chips, so a pretty straight-forward update seems near-certain. If they can drop the price on the rMBP a little, then the non-retina MBP may be discontinued as well.

An Actual Television

No. It’s never really made sense as a product for Apple and nothing has changed. The Apple TV is the hardware component in Apple’s TV strategy. There are no fundamental hardware changes that need to be made in order to expand the product’s scope; that can all be done with software.

iWatch

Unlikely. Part of me thinks it would be hilarious if Apple were trolling Samsung by leaking rumors of a watch, just so they could laugh at what they knew would be an atrociously bad pre-emptive response. But now that Samsung has embarrassed themselves with the useless and universally-panned Galaxy Gear, perhaps Apple really will show off an “iWatch.” I have no idea what it will be like, other than it will not be like any of the current “smart” watches on the market. They zigged; Apple will zag. Still, I don’t think it’s ready yet.

No New Product Categories?

Didn’t Tim Cook promise earlier this year that Apple would be releasing a new product category this year? No, actually he didn’t. As John Gruber has astutely pointed out, Cook said Apple saw the “potential of exciting new product categories” and later said they were coming out with “amazing new hardware” later in the year. They are separate statements.